Saturday, February 6, 2016

Taralli - Italian Mini Bagels or Pretzels

While I’m still in the mode of dusting off old family recipes, I found this Italian Taralli cookie recipe that my mother made every year around Easter. I have no idea of the significance of this recipe to Easter, so if anybody has an answer feel free to leave a comment.

These are also called taralli Italian pretzels or taralli Italian cookies, but I always called them mini bagels.

All I know is that whenever she made these tasty snacks they didn’t last very long and I was always begging for more. So I had to give this a try, and I wasn’t disappointed, the smell and taste quickly brought me back to my childhood.

There are many variations of this tasty Italian snack from sweet to savory. Our recipe is on the savory side using fennel seed, and black pepper. If you type a search for Taralli you will find many different recipes, I’ve never tried any of the sweet ones maybe next time.

Add the flour, salt, pepper, and fennel seed to a large mixing bowl, and mix these dry. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water add to the flour along with the dry wine and olive oil. Knead until the dough is smooth if the dough is too sticky just add a little more flour. Now set the dough aside to rest for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes I divided the dough into two equal pieces, and cut off small pieces and rolled a small log about 5 inches long, then connected the two ends to make a small bagel shape. This yielded 54 small tasty Taralli. The amount may vary based on the size you make; they don’t all have to be the same size unless you’re a perfectionist.

Start a pot of water and bring it to a roaring boil. I dropped 10 at a time into the water, they will sink to the bottom and come right back to the top. I removed them with aslotted spoonand placed them on a clean cloth.

Now it’s time to bake them, I preheated the oven to 325 degrees. Place them on cookie sheets with parchment paper and baked two sheets at a time, one on the middle rack and one on the top rack for 30 minutes. Then switched them and baked for another 20 minutes until they were golden brown.

These things are great to snack on all day long, pour yourself a nice glass of wine and enjoy these taralli Italian cookies. I’m sure the sweet version will be great with coffee or tea.

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